Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for facilitating coordinated multipoint communication in a wireless network, in particular to a method and a system for improving the coordination of multi-point communication in a wireless communication network comprising a plurality of base stations and a backhaul network connecting the plurality of base stations.
Description of Related Art
Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) techniques provide an increased user throughput in Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced. Therein, several base stations jointly serve one or more user elements or client devices, which, therefore, allows for a more efficient management of inter-cell interferences and higher multiplexing gain of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems by increasing a virtual number of antennas.
Therein, to maximize the performance gain of CoMP it is necessary to find and select cooperating base stations which are capable of joining a selected CoMP technique in the radio layer. This may for example be done by detecting base stations within the range of a client device so that the radio parameters, such as the reference signal received quality and channel state information are commonly used. Further, when considering a CoMP technique, it is also necessary to consider the backhaul network properties, such as available capacity and latency for the clustering procedure, because the CoMP technique needs to share information and/or user data with other base stations through the backhaul network.
EP 2 498 530 A1 discloses a method for coordinated multipoint communication in a wireless communication network. The wireless communication network has a plurality of base stations and a backhaul network connecting the plurality of base stations. Therein, the method includes selecting one or more cooperating base stations for a coordinated multipoint communication for a client device serviced by a serving base station, determining whether the backhaul network supports a coordinated multipoint technique selected for a cooperating base station, and in case the backhaul network is not sufficient to support a coordinated multipoint technique for one or more of the cooperating base stations, reconfiguring the backhaul network to meet the requirements of the coordinated multipoint technique.
However, a poor and, therefore, insufficient performance might also be caused by the backhaul network itself. In this case, reconfiguring the wireless communication network, which is for example a Radio Access Network (RAN), might be useless or even have the adverse effect on LTE-Advanced performance.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method for facilitating coordinated multipoint communication for a client device in a wireless communication network.